Yahoo to decide if it accepts Microsoft’s offer

Posted by multippt

Looks like it’s Yahoo’s turn to decide if it should accept the $44.6 billion deal. The outcome will determine what happens to the search engine community - users, developers, etc. While Yahoo and Google has been actively embracing openess (particularly technologies that are not yet completed), going as far as to making APIs available for free, Microsoft ain’t so active. Rather, Microsoft was seen as shunning openess, prefering to stick to strategies that will somewhat coerce people into using its propiertary technology.

It’s been known that big mergers tend to fail more often, due to the difficulties that arise when merging them together. It’s not easy to get open Yahoo to go with closed Microsoft. However, if Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo, Yahoo would be facing a lot of trouble from Google. Surely Yahoo won’t want to end up like AOL.

The main point of Microsoft buying Yahoo is not its search capabilities, but rather the advertising. Yahoo is still top at advertising, perhaps maybe until Google acquires DoubleClick. Still, Microsoft + Yahoo will have the overall advantage in advertising Though they still will not be able to compete against Google in terms of search, that is unless Microsoft or Yahoo decides to do something absurd like completely opening up search (or make a lot more information readily accessible), which for years have remained closed-source and restricted despite the presence of APIs provided by Google and Yahoo. Sure, if Yahoo were to do one more step like removing the limits bounded to its search APIs (still considered better than Google’s since they are ad free, and the results can be re-ordered), it may turn the tide against Google.

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Looks like we may need to keep a tab on those Yahoo press releases.